Coalition caught out misleading the nation over infrastructure investment

It is widely acknowledged that the decline of the investment stage of the mining boom means Australia needs to generate jobs in other sectors.

Infrastructure investment is a critical part of this economic adjustment.

Investing in the right projects now will support economic growth and jobs in the short term, while lifting national capacity and productivity in the long term.

There is little point pursing a policy program to create new industries through innovation if you don't also ensure that our infrastructure can meet the requirements of new and existing industries.

That is why now is the right time to increase infrastructure investment in the national economic interest.

But the Government has reduced investment and is pretending otherwise.

It has also been so incompetent that it has been unable to even deliver the reduced investment in line with its commitments.

In 2014, when the $50 billion investment figure was first invented, the Government said it would invest $8 billion on infrastructure in the 2015-16 financial year.

But the Treasury's Final Budget Outcomes document for 2015-16 shows the Government invested only $5.5 billion which included a $490 payment to the Western Australian Government for GST compensation.

So the actual underspend was nearly $3 billion, or more than 35 per cent.

The truth eventually catches up.

And it keeps catching up.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, infrastructure work conducted for the public sector has been lower in each of the 12 quarters presided over by the Abbott-Turnbull governments than in any of the 21 quarters under the Rudd -Gillard governments after the first Labor Budget in 2008.

It is time for Malcolm Turnbull to get out of the propaganda business and start investing in the railways, roads and other infrastructure requires to underpin sustainable economic growth.